The Cross Timbers

by Edward Everett Dale

  In addition to the cold-drinks stand there was always a merry-go-round. The power for running this was furnished by a dejected-looking mule, whose appearance indicated that he could see little point in walking slowly around and around the central post all day with only slight pauses when the merry-go-round stopped to let some of its passengers off and to take on others. Often the owner and operator would give a seat to a couple of musicians, who played a violin and an accordion and sometimes sang as they whirled about. Sometimes there were other so-called “attractions” as a doll rack or shooting gallery, but the cold-drinks stand and merry-go-round were always present at large picnics.

  It is difficult to say whether the social behavior of the people of the Texas Cross Timbers, between 1882 and 1892, differed much from that of the rural inhabitants of other states in the same period of time. Certainly great changes in our social customs as a whole have occurred in the past three-quarters of a century. It seems to me, however, that probably the Texas Cross Timbers dwellers were at least slightly more Victorian in social behavior than were those of the northern prairie states and possibly even of some of the southern states.

  Children were taught to say “yes sir” and “no sir” and “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am” to older persons. At the table children said “thank you for the bread” and “no thank you, I wouldn’t choose [or wish] any” when refusing a dish of food passed to them. Napkins were almost unknown, and all members of a family used a common towel, comb, and brush, but a clean towel was given to guests.

  No one except her husband, close relatives, and friends who had known her since girlhood ever called a married woman by her given name. Moreover, when a young man was introduced to Miss Mary Brown, for example, he called her “Miss Brown” for a long time before venturing to say “Miss Mary,” and only after she had become a close friend did he call her “Mary.”

  Perhaps it was in their ideas concerning dress and speech that the Cross Timbers people of three-quarters of a century ago differed most from people of today. A calico dress and sunbonnet were worn by most women for everyday, while men wore a hickory shirt and either jeans pants or overalls. For Sunday the women wore hats to church, and men favored a blue serge suit and white shirt. Women’s dresses, in any case, reached within an inch or two of the floor.

  Little girls wore short skirts, and boys sometimes wore dresses until they were two or three years old. They were then given short pants or knickers and often did not put on long pants until they were eight or nine years old. Boys and girls went barefoot from about May until October, and they usually drove their parents nearly frantic by urging to be allowed to start going barefoot earlier than their elders thought was wise.

  Young women wore hoops and bustles at one period, although the fashion did not last in our community, at least, longer than two or three years. Any woman who rode horseback used a sidesaddle and wore a long black riding skirt. All men and boys wore a hat or cap when outside, and to remind a small boy to take off his hat when he came into the house was one of the minor crosses which most mothers had to bear.

  A majority of the men of the Cross Timbers chewed tobacco, as did a considerable number of teen-age boys and some who had not reached their “teens.” A few men smoked a pipe, but cigarette smoking was confined largely to older boys or young men, who usually rolled their own.

  A great many women dipped snuff, but the only woman that I ever saw smoke was Grandma Gray, a very old lady who was blind. She lived with her son for many years, but after his death her more distant relatives decided to send her to the county poorhouse. Because she quite naturally did not want to go there the members of my father’s church agreed to keep her in their homes as long as she lived.

  She came to us first for about two months. She smoked a clay pipe and among my duties were lighting her pipe with a sulphur match or a coal from the fireplace and leading her when she wanted to take a walk. She lived for only a few months after leaving us for the home of another member of the Old School Baptist Church.

  Father never used tobacco in any form, nor did George or I; yet, we were sometimes offered a chew by boys about our own age. When drying peaches we would often peel very soft freestones, take out the seeds, crush the pulp, and spread it out on a clean board to dry. Once it was dry we would press eight or ten sheets of this together and cut it into plugs and offer to each other a chew of “tobe.”

  Probably the speech of the Cross Timbers people did not differ much from that of most other Southern uplanders. Fire was called “fahr,” James was usually pronounced “Jeems,” help in some instances became “holp,” and “et” replaced eat, ate, and have eaten. A young man often “carried” his horse to water, a cow to the pasture, and his girl to church. A woman did not break her leg but a “lower limb.” In fact, with floor-length skirts and the use of the term “limb,” it almost seemed that it was a social error for a woman to admit that she had legs!

  Many words or expressions freely used today were considered highly improper in Cross Timbers Society during my boyhood days. To refer to an unmarried woman’s future children was a grave social error.

  Upon one occasion I was at Tom and Lucy’s home when the sewing circle was meeting there. The seven or eight women, including Betty Vick, an eighteen-year-old daughter of one of them, were talking about how badly spoiled some children of the neighborhood were. In a moment’s lull of the conversation Betty said earnestly, “I’ll tell you right now if I ever have any . . .” she stopped suddenly, blushed, and continued, “nieces or nephews, they are not going to be spoiled!”

  Such words as “belly,” “bull,” “boar,” and “pregnant” were never used in mixed company. One day six-year-old Ted Hurst, who was standing before a window, called excitedly, “Oh mommie! Mr. Preston’s old bull is comin’ down the road!”

  “Teddy,” his mother replied reprovingly, “you should say ‘male’.”

  Ted was quite mindful of his mother’s words, for the following morning he was again standing before the window and suddenly called to his mother, “Oh mommie! Mr. Preston’s old male bull is comin’ down the road again!”

  Victorian as were the manners and customs of the people of the Cross Timbers, their social life was far from being drab or monotonous. In a time and place where entertainment and recreation were not purchasable commodities, the adults made their own, just as the children made their own toys. Moreover, something one makes for himself is always more precious than something bought.

  The fact that most persons worked hard made periods of leisure more dear. School, church, socials, play parties, literary societies, visiting with friends and neighbors, and picnics or fishing trips were all a part of the social life of our community. Finally, to any man, woman, or child who has worked hard all day the opportunity to relax for an hour or two with a good book or magazine is a greater joy than any social function.

  11. The Lure of the West

  After living for ten years in our little Cross Timbers home we left it in November, 1892, for a new home in the Prairie West. A number of incidents and events fostered this removal but perhaps the chief factor was our father’s inborn restless spirit, which had led him to cross the Plains to California in 1850, to the Pikes Peak area in 1858, to Nebraska soon after the close of the Civil War, and from that state to Texas.

  Unquestionably my father, like many other Americans, was a born pioneer. He had bought this fifty-six–acre tract of wooded land and by a little over ten years of hard labor had transformed it into a well-improved and productive little farm. Now that he had nothing more to do than keep up the improvements and maintain the fertility of the soil he was ready to leave for the Prairie West to develop another tract of land.

  As for George and me, by the time I was five years old, the word “West” brought to both of us mental pictures of a mighty, mysterious land of romance and adventure, where would be found Indians, cowboys, buffalo, panthers, and other wild animals. To us it was an enchanted land of wide plains and high
mountains, which we hoped we might someday see. Our imaginations were further stimulated by occasional visits of relatives from the Prairie West.

  Among these was Uncle Isaac, my father’s young brother, referred to in an earlier chapter as migrating with my father from Missouri to Nebraska and, some years later, from Nebraska to Texas. His family at that time consisted of a son about eighteen years old and two daughters, one about twenty and the other about fifteen or sixteen years of age.

  Soon after reaching Texas the son died, probably of pneumonia. The youth was the apple of his father’s eye and his death almost broke the old man’s heart. A few months later the older daughter married a young wheat farmer, who lived only a few miles east of Vernon, Texas. At the young couple’s earnest insistence, the younger daughter lived with them until she was old enough to get a job as clerk in a Vernon store.

  Uncle Ike, as we always called him, was of even more restless nature than my father. He was hardly old enough to join the California gold rush but in the early 1850’s left Missouri for Kansas. Here he spent two or three years freighting merchandise from the Missouri River ports to the little prairie towns before returning to Missouri to get married and more or less settle down.

  To me, Uncle Ike was always a romantic and colorful figure. Once he remarked to me, “Ed, I once boarded a couple of weeks with old man Cody when his nephew, Willie, that was later called ‘Buffalo Bill,’ was a little shirt-tail kid runnin’ around th’ place.”

  With his two daughters living near Vernon, Texas, it was only natural that Uncle Ike should drift out to that region. As he had a big wagon and four good mules he had no difficulty in finding profitable employment freighting goods from Vernon and Quanah, Texas, to remote little towns that were forty to seventy or more miles from the railroad. He usually returned with a load of buffalo or cattle bones, which he sold at the railroad towns for a good price.

  For years he had no home except his covered wagon, in which he slept on cold nights or when it was raining. In pleasant weather he spread his blankets on the grass and slept under the stars. Free and footloose, he visited his daughters for a day or so and about once a year drove down to see us. To me he was a heroic figure coming, like young Lochinvar, out of the West.

  On the occasion of his first visit, when I was about five years old, I recall running out to meet him as his big wagon rolled to a halt in front of our house. Then as I climbed up on the front wheel of the wagon to shake his hand and peer back into the cavernous depths of the space beneath its canvas cover, I felt that I knew just how the West smelled! It smelled like a mixture of Arbuckle coffee and brown sugar with a trace of the scent of bacon, dried apples, sweating mules, and oiled harness leather, all blended in a delightful odor which must be that of the West itself!

  Not only did Uncle Isaac keep us slightly in touch with the Prairie West, but, as mentioned in a former chapter, my brother Henry, before joining Mattie’s husband in establishing a store, came back to tell us of his work as a hunter, trapper, and Indian trader. Then our father and Fannie’s husband, Mace Hutchinson, made their big trip to Navajoe, returning with stories of grass almost waist high and level prairie land where one could plow a furrow a mile or more long without encountering a single stone or root.

  Finally in October, 1888, Alice and I made the trip to Navajoe to be followed by Father and George a month or so later. Perhaps my father would have remained in Greer County then, but he would have had to settle on a claim near Navajoe and start from scratch to impove it with very little money to make such improvements.

  When John and his wife, Ava, came down in the early spring of 1890 to make a crop with us they brought us news of the Navajoe region and the Dale clan living there. Henry had sold his interest in the store and bought Jay’s claim and built a new house on it. He also was making other improvements, such as planting more peach trees, thereby adding to the orchard which Father had started on the place in 1889.

  Henry’s objective in adding two new rooms to the front of Jay’s half dugout became clear when, in the early spring of 1891, he married sixteen-year-old Virginia White. She was a lovely girl, the daughter of a prominent settler living about six miles west of the little town of Navajoe. The forty-year-old husband brought his bride to the “fashionable split-level” home he had prepared for her, while Jay, who needed a farm about as much as a Hottentot needs snow shoes, lived with John and Ava or with Henry and his bride.

  About 1891 we received a telegram telling us of the death of our sister Alice at Henrietta, Texas. Around that same time Tom and Lucy sold their Cross Timbers farm and removed to a rented blackland prairie farm about three miles west of us. As this was in easy walking distance we still visited them from time to time but by no means as often as when they lived on the Cross Timbers farm only a mile away.

  In the meantime Uncle Isaac had married a widow who was running a boarding house in Vernon. He took his wife and her seven-year-old adopted daughter to a home that he had established about nine miles north of Navajoe near a country store and post office called Warren. Here my old uncle had built a commodious two-story house, had fenced fields and pastures, and had planted a large orchard.

  It is not surprising that Father, with his brother, three of his sons, and his youngest daughter all living in Greer County, either in or near Navajoe, should begin to give serious consideration to leaving the little Cross Timbers farm and removing to Greer County, where a level prairie claim of 160 acres could be found near them. Perhaps even more important than this desire to be near his brother, sons, and daughter was Father’s inborn love of pioneering.

  Although he never spoke to George and me of our future, no doubt it was another factor in his decision to leave the Cross Timbers and remove to the Prairie West as soon as he could find a buyer for the little farm. By 1892 George was eighteen years old. This was an age when some Cross Timbers boys were at least beginning to think of getting married and establishing a home for themselves. While George had shown no signs of this he might do so at any time. In that event he would have to rent a small farm and become a tenant farmer, which was not a cheerful prospect. In the West he could have land of his own.

  It seems to me now amazing that our father had been able to make a good living on our fifty-six–acre farm and also to save a considerable amount of money. There was no bank nearer than Fort Worth and few persons in our neighborhood had ever been inside a bank. Yet by 1892 my father had between three and four hundred dollars in gold coins stashed away behind the rafters of our attic bedroom.

  It had been accumulated by hard work of all of us. Father was up at dawn every morning and called George and me before taking the milk buckets and heading for the cow lot to milk our three or four cows. By the time he had returned after straining the milk I usually had breakfast ready and George had the beds made and the house swept and cleaned up. After breakfast the dishes were quickly washed and put away in the safe and we were all ready for work. This was the order of the day when we were keeping “bachelor’s hall.” When John and Ava were with us for eight or nine months Ava, of course, did the cooking and other housework with a little help from her young sister, Minnie, and me.

  As I look backward over a period of more than seventy-five years, it seems to me now that this home in the Texas Cross Timbers was an excellent place for a boy to grow up. Probably most social workers and amateur “do-gooders” of today would say that George and I were “underprivileged children.” Maybe we were but we didn’t know it. Nobody had ever told us that we were underprivileged and if anyone had we would have denied it bitterly.

  It is true that our home had no bathtub or “outhouse” but neither did the home of any other family in our community. We bathed in a washtub on Saturday night, and when we went barefoot in the summer, washed our feet every night before going to bed. For women, the “bathroom” was under the bed or in the nearby thick woods of the hog pasture or behind the barn, corn crib, or tool shed. We had no heat in the house except what was furnished by th
e big fireplace in the front room and the cook stove in the kitchen. Obviously, we had no ice in the summer but the milk and butter were kept fairly cool in the cellar.

  On the other hand, we had plenty of good food and a comfortable place to sleep at night, and, while we worked hard, we had plenty of time to play, hunt, fish, and visit with our friends and neighbors. It is true that as boys neither George nor I had much money to spend but we needed very little. I remember that Father once offered each of us a five-dollar gold piece, which we refused saying that we did not need any money!

  All in all, life in the Cross Timbers was a very happy life. On the whole Father was not only better off financially than most of our neighbors but he was highly respected by everyone who knew him. I recall that upon one occasion two men came to ask him to join them in settling a controversy between two neighbors over a tract of land which both claimed to own.

  Instead of “going to law” the two parties had agreed to settle the matter by each appointing one man and these two choosing a third. These three would then investigate the matter, hear the evidence, and render a decision, which both parties had agreed to accept as final. The two men appointed by the “litigants” had chosen my father as the third man to help them settle this question. This method of dealing with minor civil disputes had been used by the American pioneers as early as the occupation of the Virginia Piedmont by settlers and probably was as fair to the parties concerned as a more formal method would have been.

  Upon another occasion, the son of a large landowner in the community brought a note from his mother asking my father to come over because “Family troubles are coming.” Whether Father was able to help this family solve its domestic problems I do not know, but we never heard of any further difficulties.